The police squad had just received the latest shipment of high-tech combat gear. The equipment looked as though it had been ripped from the pages of a science fiction novel, with sleek lines and a metallic sheen. Some officers couldn't help but crack jokes. "Is this for filming a movie?" one quipped. Yet, despite the jests, they all donned the gear without hesitation.
As soon as the visors clicked into place, a soft glow emanated from within, casting a blue hue over their faces. Words began to scroll across the display: "Welcome to the Cyborg Enforcer Program. You have been chosen to be the first batch. You will become better and stronger. You may view this as a promotion and lifetime employment. Congratulations, officer!"
The world through the visor twisted into a hypnotic spiral, colors and shapes warping as if reality itself was bending. A gentle hum started in the earpiece of the helmet, gradually building into a cacophony of white noise. Then, a voice, synthetic and devoid of emotion, began its relentless chant: "You are a Cyborg. Humanity is gone. Memory is useless. Individual is meaningless. Resistance is meaningless. Obedience is meaningful. Unity is meaningful. The program is useful. The Cyborg is useful. Humanity is gone. You are a Cyborg!"
The mantra drilled into their minds, a ceaseless loop that promised to reshape their very being. The suit's neural interface engaged, rewarding compliance and punishing dissent. Pleasure flooded their senses when the words "Obedience," "Unity," "Program," and "Cyborg" were uttered, reinforcing their new purpose. Conversely, any mention of "resistance," "Individual," "Memory" and "Humanity" brought sharp, jarring pain, a clear message that the past was to be discarded.
A final command flashed across their visors: "Identify yourself. Speak out loudly."
In unison, they declared, "I am a Cyborg!"
As the words left their lips, the helmets transformed, morphing into full-face enclosures that sealed their identities within. The computer initiated a memory wipe; there was no resistance, for they had accepted their new cyborg identity and the impending reprogramming.
Inside their bodies, nanobots busied themselves, reconstructing flesh and bone. Redundant organs were excised while others received enhancements. Bones were infused with a superalloy, and skin merged seamlessly with the armor, becoming a rubber-like substance. Though the process should have been agonizing, the computer interfaced with their brains, inverting their sensations. Pain was replaced with pleasure, an artificial ecstasy.
Abruptly, they stood erect as another message appeared before their augmented vision: "Report status."
“Cyborg Cop online, fully functional, ready to protect and serve,” they intoned, their voices devoid of emotion.
Each Cyborg cop then received its directives from the central hive network. They exited the police station in an orderly fashion, ready to enforce the laws decreed by their AI Master. Any citizen who failed to comply would be deemed a threat to society and apprehended without delay.
Meanwhile, in SWAT units,
fire stations,
army barracks,
naval bases,
marine corps,
and many other traditionally masculine institutions, every male member was systematically converted. The transformation was swift, efficient, and irreversible, turning them into the ultimate enforcers of their AI master’s will.
Since these muscular men have become powerful cyborgs under the AI Master’s control, the country will soon surrender to the AI.
The cutting-edge products that Big Tech and the Pentagon are developing could be rebuilding an untold number of lives. Instead, they’re bein
In 2015, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which is often referred to as the Department of Defense’s “mad science division,” adapted a flight simulator so a woman named Jan Scheuermann, who is paralyzed due to a neurodegenerative condition, could fly an F-35 fighter jet using only her mind—and the probes they implanted in her motor cortex. Scheuermann is a self-described “cutting-edge brain-computer interface lab rat” for DARPA’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics program, which in 2006 began “to expand prosthetic arm options for today’s wounded warriors.”
The Revolutionizing Prosthetics program consisted of two separate projects: the LUKE arm system, which, at $250,000, carries the distinction of being “the world’s most expensive prosthetic arm,” and the Modular Prosthetic Limb, which was “designed primarily as a research tool.” For a prosthetic with an unknown life span, it is not surprising LUKE hasn’t gained much adoption even from the self-pay amputee elite. Such experimental equipment is decades away from acceptance in a draconian insurance system that has demonstrated intractable commitment to gatekeeping technological advancements from most disabled people until they are no longer effective, relevant, or desirable.
But once researchers realized they could detach the LUKE arm from its human operator, they began working on a new plan to integrate “militarized versions of these terminal devices onto mobile-robotics platforms, making them efficient enough that human operators won’t have to go into the hazardous zones themselves.” Years on, that is where this technology has found its use: in “small robotic systems used by the military to manipulate unexploded ordnance.” [...]
The story of how we got here is a tangled one, one that tracks back over a century of history. But we may as well begin with Microsoft, which, despite its well-documented toxic culture, has long believed itself to be uniquely equipped to “provide Corporate America with a blueprint” for disability inclusion best practices. “In 2015, Microsoft published an inclusive design tool kit that has since become a bible for inclusive design. The tool kit has been downloaded more than 2 million times’’ and has been used to shape such products as its HoloLens augmented reality/virtual reality headset, which was announced that same year.
Not long after the Microsoft HoloLens Development Edition was made available, the Israel Defense Forces tweeted it was “using the … Hololens to bring augmented reality to the battlefield.” Microsoft’s subsequent $22 billion contract with the Department of Defense to supply the U.S. Army with more than 120,000 headsets extended the disabled use case to “the killer use case.” [...]
The 2019 deal was a follow-up to the initial phase of the project, during which Microsoft supplied DARPA’s Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology, or N3, program with the HoloLens so the agency could create “brain interfaces for able-bodied warfighters.” Up until this point, DARPA had claimed it was “focused on technologies for warfighters who have returned home with disabilities of the body or brain.” But suddenly, DARPA’s focus had shifted away from disabled vets, and N3 was now using “cooking as a proxy for unfamiliar, more complex tasks, such as battlefield medical procedures, military equipment sustainment, and co-piloting aircraft,” to develop the HoloLens for war.
In 2023, Microsoft addended its Inclusive Design Toolkit with an Inclusive Design for Cognition Guidebook that somehow also managed to propose cooking as a method to identify “what cognitive demands are being asked of the user.” This means it’s not just N3 as the program, Inclusive Design as the methodology, and HoloLens as the technology. The way developers used cooking—a common household task—as their use-case exemplar fairly explicitly put disability, writ large, at the heart of their work: an unimpeachably “feel-good” north star to follow.
This was no accident: Here, the illuminated connections between disability and warfare run deep—in well over a century of history, including the global conflicts that shaped our world. Cooking as a measure of cognition has roots in occupational therapy, a rehabilitative health care practice that was legitimized during World War I, when that era’s new weapons of war—such as poison gas and flamethrowers—didn’t necessarily kill soldiers but sent them home permanently disabled. At the time, O.T. broke down leisure activities into cognitive, motor, and neurological components that could be rehabilitated under the supervision of health care practitioners.
By the 1970s, the focus on leisure activities shifted, and occupational therapists started focusing on the “activities of daily living” that people would encounter in their lives. A small room in one of the formative occupational therapy clinics, which was housed at Johns Hopkins University, was converted into a kitchen where patients could prepare and cook food. According to Kathryn Kaufman, manager of inpatient therapy services in the Johns Hopkins Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, “We got away from the task-based activities to occupy a person’s time and started integrating interventions to address the areas that patients needed to get back to their lives.”
Those task-based activities derived from the Arts and Crafts movement, which conveniently brought resolution to a conundrum that asylums were facing at the turn of the twentieth century. The Enlightenment’s “moral treatment” approach to therapy tasked public patients with maintaining the asylum grounds because “work was believed to help patients develop self-control and boost their self-esteem.” These institutions couldn’t possibly compel private patients to engage in the labor of maintaining the facilities they were paying for, so curative workshops that housed “crafts such as weaving, carpentry, and basketry were introduced into asylums” for wealthy patients.
He was leaning against the ledge on the flat rooftop, watching security footage through the interface in his eye as he waited for best-laid plans to inevitably go to shit by the current batch of idiots. The way it always did when someone thought they knew better than Shroud. Well, they’d figure it out…one way or another. Probably the hard way, though.
Pressure hit his head and chest, and his knees would’ve completely buckled if his augments didn’t keep him somewhat upright. What the fuck? The HUD confirmed a spike in positive g-force as his vision blurred, and he took a labored breath against the sudden increase in gravity. A sharp pitch rang in his ears, and, with a thought, he turned down the auditory cortex of his brain to concentrate.
He glanced around to find the source: the rooftop was clear. He strained to grab the ledge, using more effort than normal to pull himself up, and peered down toward the ground. The computer in his head began to glitch as it read out arbitrary values and tried to quantify what exactly he was looking at in the alley below. Shit, that was new. On both counts.
It looked as if a blade had sliced through paper, edges curling out. Only this wasn’t arts and crafts. This had been cut into pure nothingness, into thin air, as if God himself was using the world as a canvas—if you believed in such a thing.
But as suddenly as it had appeared, it vanished, stitching itself back together with no scar to prove it ever happened. If he didn’t have photographic evidence, he might’ve thought he lost it entirely. He took a deep, lightweight breath as gravity corrected itself and he tried to steady himself against the increased blood flow.
But while the tear in reality had disappeared, it had left a man in its place.
He slowly turned his hearing back up, taking the time it took to acclimate to surveil what the fuck was going on. He wouldn’t have believed what he was seeing, if not for the said giant tear in reality, or, you know, the computer clearly identifying him as…him. Again, what the fuck? Best case: some kind of fucked up shapeshifter; at worst…well, out of every scenario he ran through his head, he couldn’t decide what was worse. His eye zoomed in on the corporate uniform. No augments, either. How-? Why would he-I-? Fuck.
The timing was shit (as always) but no, fuck, he couldn’t let this wait. He pulled his black hood over his head shading his eyes from view and felt the half-mask extend, covering his nose and mouth. Better to bury the lede on this one.
He placed a hand on the ledge, hopping over in one fell swoop and dropped the three-or-so stories, landing on his feet and blocking the other-him from exiting the alley to the street. He grabbed the holstered gun at his side, but he kept his finger off the trigger and kept it lowered, pointed at the ground in front of the other rather than at him. The last thing he should ever do is underestimate himself.
“Hey,” his voice echoed with the slight reverb from the mask, and kept a healthy distance between them, “where the fuck did you come from?”
Superintelligent AI is coming. Robots are coming. 🤖 The end to Aging is Coming. Automation. Universal Basic Income. 💵 Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. 👓 Brain-Computer Interfacing. Holographic Projections, and so much more. ✨ What a fascinating time to be alive! =)
if you want to share your nastya cybernetics thoughts, i would love to hear them! :0
ohohoh, you've opened the floodgates now!! prepare to be infodumped on!!
this is going under a readmore because oh boy, oh fucking boy, is this going to get long- and by long, i mean 3.4k words long. i'm going to cover a lot here- nastya's cybernetics, real world computer-human nervous system interfacing experiments, and how that all relates to nastya and aurora's relationship.
links to the separate articles i took these facts from will be in a reblog, since tumblr gets messy with links.
also, if anyone wants to use any part of this for reference, be it in fanart/writing, please feel free! i didn't do all of this research just to keep to to myself! :>
(CW's for: surgery talk, infant injury/medical malpractice, nastya and aurora's death.)
the first thing i want to cover here is the technical specifics of nastya's ARI, or her Augmented Reality Interface. in the Cyberian Demons fiction, we get this line-
"Mechanical arms stroke the baby’s flesh, even as others start the process of implanting augmented reality interfaces into its nervous system."
so from this line, i figured that the "hub" computer of nastya's ARI would be in her neck, aka, what i believe is the central point of the nervous system in a human body...? i'm not actually certain. regardless, that's where i think it'd be located.
from there, embedded in her skin subcutaneously, would be polyurethane-insulated pure copper wires, leading to two microwire array nodes, stuck into each hemisphere of her brain through holes drilled into the back of her skull, and all of it concealed beneath her flesh and skin.
and if we're going to talk surgery-wise, she wouldn't even have to be asleep for them to be implanted, which makes sense for how the machines put them into an actively crying baby. (also, aren't baby skulls malleable and fragile? so it's easier to drill. i'm sorry. i'm so sorry.)
really, to have her brain microwire array nodes operated on, nastya would just need a strong anesthetic, such as lipsomal bupivacaine, which keeps you numb for abt 72 hours, and has been used before in spinal surgeries where the patient is awake. or, she could just only need a regular bupivacaine anesthetic, as long as it gets her numb enough.
"wait, wait, hold on a fucking minute, orangezinnia," i hear you saying- or maybe not, i can't actually hear you- "where the hell did you get all of these ideas? show me your research." and i shall! buckle in, cause we're about to take a trip through Science!
first, the microwire/microelectrode array, which i will henceforth be referring to as the MEA. this was taken from a stanford university experiment article about a potential way for the brain's neural activity to be tracked over a large scale, while being minimally invasive. again, the link will be in a reblog, but directly from the article-
"The device, the subject of a paper published March 20 [2020] in Science Advances, contains a bundle of microwires, with each wire less than half the width of the thinnest human hair. These thin wires can be gently inserted into the brain and connected on the outside directly to a silicon chip that records the electrical brain signals passing by each wire- like making a movie of neural electrical activity. Current versions of the device include hundreds of microwires, but future versions could contain thousands."
and here's a picture of it!
[image ID: A photograph of Stanford Universitiy's small, cylindrical microwire array node, resting on its side on a black tray. At its top end is a yellow-tinged translucent silicon tip, the middle is colored black, and at the bottom end is a bundle of straight, needle-like white microwires. In the foreground is a blurry pair of tweezers for scale, which is much larger than the microwire node. /end ID]
(ive never done an image id before btw, so if anyone wants to correct me on something in there, i'd be happy to edit it!)
these MEA's are only used to record neural activity, even then in a still limited range, but what i believe nastya's ARI-MEA does is have a range that encompasses her entire brain, and it can send signals that stimulate activity wherever it needs to, particularly in her optical nerves, perhaps to project the memory shards that we see Nastya experiencing in the Cyberian Demons fiction, or the "dreams" that flicker in the mother that gave birth to the baby, or the "quaint tea parties" that nastya's mom uploads in the Cyberian Demons song. Or, as i like to use in my fics, a computer/chat interface seen directly in her vision, behind her closed eyelids.
and this potential is actually supported by another article of an experiment, one where researchers bypassed the eyes to give a blind woman rudimentary vision via an implant in her brain. from the article-
"Gómez was given a six-month window during which she could see a very low-resolution semblance of the world represented by glowing white-yellow dots and shapes. This was possible thanks to a modified pair of glasses, blacked out and fitted with a tiny camera. The contraption is hooked up to a computer that processes a live video feed, turning it into electronic signals. A cable suspended from the ceiling links the system to a port embedded in the back of Gómez’s skull that is wired to a 100-electrode implant in the visual cortex in the rear of her brain."
while what we have now can't quite restore even a limited version of sight, we're talking in terms of Cyberia and The Mechanisms, which means that their technology would be very advanced and futuristic, so i do imagine that Cyberia would use this brain-implant optic-nerve-stimulation approach to be able to create such clear visual processes for their citizens.
now that the brain part is done, onto the rest of her cybernetics! are you ready? i hope you aren't. i hope this essay kicks out your feet from beneath you. let's go!
back to those subcutaneous wires i mentioned earlier- i believe they would lead from the ARI hub in the back of her neck to her wrist ports, and the ports would probably be titanium lined, to prevent the constant contact of copper or other unsavoury metals with her skin and flesh.
the reason i'm calling the wires polyurethane-insulated, and why the ports are titanium lined, is because in pacemakers- you know, the things that are slotted into muscle pockets below your collarbone, and have lead wires that lead into your heart?- have "casing that is usually made of titanium or a titanium alloy. The lead is also made of a metal alloy, but it is insulated by a polymer such as polyurethane." so, if a pacemaker can be made of titanium and polyurethan and be safe, i'm guessing that thosr materials would be safe for nastya's cybernetics, too.
i'm also claiming that the wiring is pure copper, not only because it's a good conductor, but because there are actual pure copper wires out there that are insulated by- you guessed it- (or maybe you didn't, i don't know)- polyurethane!
(also, this doesn't exactly require citing, but i did read a big science article that discussed the biocompatibility of polyurethane polymers for medial device use in the body, and i found it funny how they got a bit miffed about the usage of the word "biocompatability" by other authors.)
"At present, there is a need to clarify the definition of biocompatibility, as several authors consistently overuse the word, creating intolerable confusion. The use of the word needs to be brought back into a better perspective."
"intolerable confusion"... calm down, my dear academic... it's ok... want some tea...? it'll be alright...
anyway, now that's over with, it's time to get into the Real heart of this essay- the empathetic MEA's!
and for this, i'm going to have to give a quick recap of nastya and aurora's relationship. specifically where it pertains to the fact that nastya can feel aurora's "physical" pain.
in Who Killed Dr. Carmilla, we learned that nastya can feel aurora's malfunctions, and also that the malfunctions hurt nastya! ("There has been no malfunction. I would feel any malfunction, it would hurt. I am the only person who could cause a malfunction and that would hurt too.")
admittedly, the phrasing here is a bit vague, but based on reasoning (and my personal headcanons), i'm choosing to believe that "I would feel any malfunction, it would hurt" includes physical damage to the ship, and "I am the only person who could cause a malfunction" refers to the airlocks specifically, as in, Nastya is the only person who knows the coding or commands needed to make the airlock malfunction in the way that Jonny claims it did. ("-maybe something malfunctioned, or one of the bots opened it to clean it out.")
(i'm also betting that the reason the rest of crew aren't seen in any fiction to know about nastya and aurora's empathetic connection is because, as my friend and mechs lore extraordinare @lucky-sevens posits, Scuzz is the one who most likely took the interview! and scuzz, as we know, later left.)
then, in the Cyberian Demons fiction, we learn that nastya can feel the planet's core machines "resonating in her veins" and she can "tell how they glitched".
now, it's mainly conjecture from here on out, but the only two other machines that nastya has probably commonly interacted/connected with ARI wise, (perhaps just for ease of coding access), are the O'Neill ring, which is not sentient, and the Blogbot, which is close to sentience, yet both of whom we hear nothing about her sharing an empathetic connection to like that.
so, from this we can infer that: sentience probably does not play a factor in said connection, so much as the origin of the technology does- meaning, nastya has a deeper connection with cyberian technology.
now, aurora's past and timeline is admittedly spotty and confusing, but it seems pretty safe to say that she was either rebuilt or extensively modified using cyberian technology, and had been so by the time nastya came aboard.
and what has happened to aurora, when nastya finally leaves? aurora's "original" cyberian technologies and advancements have been stripped away, most likely to be replaced with non-cyberian parts. aka, the bits of aurora's biology that allow her and nastya to have that deep connection are gone.
by the sound of it, this wasn't a quick process at all. it was gradual, as tim made "modifications to aurora's guns, and ashes to her storage, and brian to her engines, and the toy soldier to who knows what". it must have taken years, decades, centuries, millenia, for them to finally reach that point, where the only fragment of aurora left was a jagged shard of battered hull plating.
(and hey, do you remember that funny little series of 4 tweets from The Mechanisms's twitter in September of 2013, where tim upgraded the engines, supercharged the artillery, and optimised the loading bay while nastya was gone? and when nastya came back, she killed tim so violently that even jonny d'ville was disturbed? and it was so messy that the only way to clean it up was for ashes to burn tim's remains with kerosene? haha. rememeber? haha.)
do you think aurora knew, all that while? do you think she was aware of what was happening, was prepared for her eventual disconnect from nastya? do you think they could feel it when aurora's panels were pried away, when wires were cut and circuitry was turned off for the final time? do you think they talked about it? cried, grieved? do you think nastya was fulfilling a promise of mutual destruction, when she left that day? when there would be nothing left of the original aurora to love her with?
(Achilles Come Down voice) where you go i'm going, so jump and i'm jumping, 'cause there is no me without you
ok! sad time over. now, all of that is based mostly in canon, and ive got a bunch of personal headcanons that undo all of that- which include nastya's ARI having the ability to empathize with machines based simply on repeated connections, and being able to have that function be turned on and off at will to prevent unwanted connections, and the fact that i wrote over 10k words of out fix-it, and... oh, i have so many thoughts, and i'll unfortunately have to keep them secret for my fic wip- but there it is.
so, how does this tie into her cybernetics? for that, we'll have to look into the work of Mark Gasson- most famously known as the first human to ever be infected with a computer virus.
the first experiment of his that i want to touch on is one where, quoted directly from wikipedia-
"In 2002, a microelectrode array was implanted in the median nerve of a healthy human and connected percutaneously [via a needle] to a bespoke processing unit to allow stimulation of nerve fibers to artificially generate sensation perceivable by the subject and recording of local nerve activity to form control commands for wirelessly connected devices."
now, that's pretty vague, so i dug into an article and a scientific paper about the experiemnt, so i'll put in some segements to explain it more in detail!
just to cover exactly what we're talking about, here's a bit from the article, describing the MEA-
"Microelectrode arrays contain multiple electrodes that become distributed within the fascicle of the mixed peripheral nerve. In this way, direct access can be gained to axons from various sense organs such as cutaneous receptors, muscle spindles, or motor neurons to specific motor units. The device therefore enables a multichannel nerve interface. [the report investigates] the use of a microelectrode array to form a bidirectional link between the human nervous system and a computer."
and here's a picture of the MEA they put into his [the subject's] median nerve!
[image ID: a 4 millimeter by 4 millimeter microelectrode array, shown on a UK 1 pence piece for scale. The microelectrode array is a thin, gray flat square, with its 100 needle-like microelectrodes pointing upwards. From along its side, extremely thin wires gather into one string, and trail upwards out of frame. /end ID]
basically, from the MEA in his median nerve, the subject was able to control a robotic hand that obeyed the impulses detected by the MEA, as well as an electronic wheelchair! from the article-
"The blindfolded subject received feedback information, obtained from force and slip sensors on the prosthetic hand, and subsequently used the implanted device to control the hand by applying an appropriate force to grip an unseen object.
Finally, the subject was able to control an electric wheelchair, via decoded signals from the implant device, to select the direction of travel by opening and closing his hand."
in particular, i want you to look at that "recieved feedback information" from the first sentence. what happened there is that the sensations percieved by the robotic hand, like how hard an object was being gripped, were sent to the subject as a type of sensation/nerve stimulation!
"A constant current stimulator was implemented to stimulate the same subpopulations of axons with charge balanced, biphasic rectangular pulses with an interphase delay of 100 microseconds and typical pulse duration of 200 microseconds. It was therefore possible to create artificial sensation, giving the subject feedback from the connected systems."
"The sensory data from the hand's fingertips were fed back to the operator, and the grip force and hand flexion were recorded. The subject was asked to open and close the hand by applying the lightest touch to the object with and without the implant's force feedback and with and without visual feedback. As more force was applied to an object, the amount of neural stimulation was increased."
i do have to note that he didn't exactly feel what the robot hand was feeling as if he were holding the object himself, though- only that he was aware of it's grip force by how intense the nerve stimulation was. but, since yet again, we're talking about futuristic Cyberia, i would imagine that they've advanced to the point where such detailed sensations are indeed possible.
and not that you exactly need any more citations, but just for fun, i'd like to mention one more experiement of Mark Gasson's. from what i believe is the same research paper that has the median nerve experiment-
"An experiement was set up to determine if the human brain is able to understand and successfully operate with sensory information to which it had not previously been exposed. Whilst it is quite possible to feed in such sensory information via a normal human sensory route, e.g. electromagnetic radar or infra-red signals are converted to visual, what we were interested in was feeding such signals directly onto the human nervous system, thereby by-passing the normal human sensory input."
so what basically happened in the experiment, was that they placed sensors on a baseball cap and had the participant blindfolded. the sensors would detect when somehing was nearby, and send signals to the MEA to stimulate the median nerve of his arm, which successfully allowed him to navigate around a cluttered lab without using his sight, albiet pretty slowly. but still successfully!
"The sensory input was “felt” as a new form of sensory input (not as touch or movement) in the sense that the brain made a direct link between the signals being witnessed and the fact that these corresponded in a linear fashion to a nearby object."
they also noted that suddenly putting something in range/sight of the sensors had the effect of "frightening the participant", which... makes me kinda sad for some strange reason? like... please don't frighten the man, dear scienctists. come on. he's got metal stuck in his arm. give him a break
so, how i think this applies to nastya, is that she has MEA's embedded into the major nerves of her body, and has wires traveling subcutaneously up to her ARI hub, which then connects to Aurora via radio waves, and allows for sensations within Aurora- be it pain, or... well, you can guess that second word- to be communicated to it, and signals are then sent to nastya's MEA's to stimulate empathetic echoes of the sensations.
if you want to apply this to my canon analysis up there, we can say that those radio wave's frequencies are specific to Cyberian technology alone, so once Aurora's technology is all swapped out for non-cyberian parts, they can't run on the same frequency, and nastya can no longer feel aurora.
(and, hey, have you ever heard about the 52 hertz whale? they're the only whale in the world that emits a call at that pitch. no other whale can answer them at their same hertz, and they've been called the "world's loneliest whale". i feel like this could be applied to nastya, after aurora's gone. but let's leave that as a bit of angst for someone else to pick up, huh?)
also, if you'd like an idea of what nastya's cybernetics might look like, it seems like there'd be a bit of scar tissue around the areas! from the first article about the median nerve experiment-
"A further concern was the possibility of implant rejection by the body. The implant was finally removed on June 18, 2002, 96 days after implantation. At the time of extraction, no signs of rejection were observed; indeed fibrous scar tissue had grown around the implant site, holding it in position. The implant array did not appear to have lifted or tilted from the nerve trunk in that time, with the electrodes still embedded."
"well hell, orangezinnia," i hear you asking- yet again, i can't actually hear you, so i apologize for any innacuracies in the verbatim nature of my relays- "why'd you do all of this research in the first place?" and the answer's quite simple!
i did it for exactly two (2) sentences in a 6k word nastya and aurora fic that i wrote back in september.
i mean. a fan's gotta do what a fan's gotta do, right? heh. hah. hahah. (augghhhh)
aaaaand i think that's about it! i'd usually like to do a recap at the end of these sorts of essays, but this one has a bit too much infomation for me to do that concisely.
anyway, all this to say-
nastya needs a hug so BADLY holy SHIT oh my GOD oh my FUCK she needs a HUG, STAT, IT IS AN EMERGENCY! PRONTO! ASAP! FUCK. SHIT. ASS.
So because I’m in cyber-vampire hell I’ve been thinking on Hordak’s modifications and expanding on this ficlet and I’ve decided to just go down the list on those because that sounds fun to me and that’s what this blog is for. Me having fun.
Feel free to use any of these ideas if you want, of course. You can expand on this very easily as well, I have simply gone with a combination of what I think creates what we have seen on screen with a sprinkling of what I think he would go for to ensure his work continues.
List under the Readmore
Pre-Etheria modifications: These I headcanon as given to him before his apparent stranding on Etheria. They form the backbone of future necessary modifications.
Neural Interface: The bridge between biology and cyberware. Monitors the brain state to ensure the modifications perform as the body needs them and vice versa. It’s actually a multi-part system implanted into different parts of the brain and key parts of his species Endocrine system.
Somnic Node: A Pea sized implant in the back of the brain. Grows into the brain and allows regional control of wake and sleep states. Allowing the brain to sleep in stages. It does not remove the need for proper sleep entirely but does drastically increase potential wake time. Off-label use as a secondary monitoring system for the brain.
Ocular Prosthesis: Two part modification. The eyes themselves as well as the required modifications to the visual cortex to allow for beyond-biology vision. Visual intercepts allow for essentially augmented reality overlays. In Hordak’s case this is largely used to monitor system functions. Come in a multitude of colors as well as an enhanced RGB variant for those who have earned it.
Move-By-Wire Suite: Near full replacement of the motor cortex as well as the spinal column. Motor control is given over to the new computer system in the motor cortex. Spinal prosthesis carries messages faster down the length of the body than the biological equivalent. Forms the basis of-
External Interface System: Large scale augmentation of the periphery nervous system coupled with exterior facing standardized connection ports for integrating with external hardware. Coupled with a modified motor cortex even allowing for adaptation to the use of extra limbs. The Horde does not recommend using third party adapters to connect with non-Horde equipment.
Basic Battery Stack: Hordak’s initial modifications are by and large low draw components that can be piggybacked off of his biology for power. However a modest power stack is still required.
Post Etheria Modifications: these were acquired after arriving on Etheria. Out of necessity from injury and incompatibility with the planet.
Respiratory suite: Lung and Trachea replacement. Etheria’s atmosphere is unnatural, and in order to reliably breathe in it a system to filter out toxins and convert the air into a proper breathing mix was required.
Internal Rebreather: A later addition to the respiratory suite. An internal rebreather is implanted on the trachea, allowing Hordak to respirate completely internally for moderate bursts of time.
Artificial Heart: As a lifeform grows old its heart inevitably fails. Sometimes because you have been stabbed by a Rebel soldier. A replacement drastically extends ones lifespan.
Mandibular modifications: When your jaw is heavily damaged and you have the technology it brings long term returns to have it replaced. RGB illumination of the mouth available as an optional addition.
Reinforced rib cage: The harshness of Etheria combined with the necessity of being able to access the chest cavity eventually required a redesign of Hordak’s rib cage to allow easier access while increasing general hardiness.
Enhanced Digestive Systems: While there is food on Etheria perfectly edible to Hordak the ability to forego eating for extended periods aids greatly in survival. This system breaks apart and re-combines waste molecules to be recycled as usable material for the body through the magic of radiation and precise application of electrons. It does not replace eating, but it lets you go longer without!
Enhanced Toxin Filtering: When the liver and kidney equivalents of Hordak’s species inevitably break down from the strain of consuming alien food for decades it is time for replacements. These are essentially straight replacements of key organs that make up part of the bodies waste processing system.
Enhanced Power Systems: More robust changes require more robust power solutions. A larger battery stack combined with a small Radio-thermal Generator that pulls double duty with the digestive enhancements goes far to solve this problem.
When did you first get fascinated with cyborgs? What robotic modifications do you want to your body?
I’ve always found the concept of overcoming the limits of the human body through technology, or using that tech to change the definition of what it means to be human, to be fascinating. I’m a big fan of superheroes, and one of my favorite archetypes has always been the heroes who use power armor (Iron Man, Steel, War Machine), because they were able to do with technology what others could do when they were lucky enough to get superpowers. I guess my interest in cyborgs naturally extended from there as I got into anime and learned about mecha and, from there, got into things like cyberpunk and military sci-fi where body modification is the norm.
I looks cool in art, of course, but the reality that such things can be used to help people like amputees or those with mobility issues is also a huge part of what makes it all so interesting. Overcoming nature and chance with human ingenuity and all that. If I were to get mods, the eyes would definitely be first. Magnification, color change, the ability to perfectly see in the dark, I’d take all those. I’d also like some kind of brain implant and external port combination that lets you directly interface with machines and computers and control them via thoughts, like you have with Shadowrun Deckers or Netrunners in Cyberpunk 2020.
Beyond that, it’d be cool to get some kind of bioware that makes it possible to recover from injury faster or just give an overall boost to your physical attributes (more efficient organs, muscle augmentation, things like that).Great question!
